AI 3D studio: models, kits and worlds

FormFromLight

Any picture to a textured 3D model.

In short

Input: A photo, render or sketch (JPG, PNG, WebP up to 20 MB), up to 3 views, or a text prompt
Output: GLB, OBJ, FBX, STL, USDZ, PBR texture maps, 2D sprites, print files
Beyond one model: Asset kits of 6 to 100 models, worlds from a single photo, lithophanes, print-ready figures
Turnaround: About 25 seconds on Fast, about 2 minutes on Studio, 15 to 20 minutes for a world
Pricing: Free to try, plans from €15 a month, packs from €2, every plan includes the API and MCP
Hosting: App and database in the Netherlands, files in Western Europe

What it is

FormFromLight is a 3D studio in the browser. You give it a photograph, a render, a drawing or a sentence and it returns a clean, textured mesh you can open in Blender, Unity, Unreal, Godot or a slicer. Around that core sit the tools a 3D pipeline normally spreads over five applications: rigging, animation, retexturing, quad remeshing, sprite rendering, themed asset kits, walkable worlds and print preparation, all working on the same library.

It is built for game developers, product teams, 3D-print operators and creators who need assets faster than modelling allows. Nothing runs on your machine: generation happens on hosted GPUs, the viewer runs in the browser, and every account, including the free one, gets two-factor authentication, an audit log and a one-click GDPR export.

The FormFromLight library of a working account: 384 models filtered by origin, 8 kits and 2 worlds — The library of the founder's own account: 384 models, 55 from pictures, 164 from text, 82 rigged, plus 8 kits and 2 worlds. Every tool in the studio writes into the same place.

Image to 3D and text to 3D

The core loop is short. Every run shows its token cost before you confirm, and a generation that fails refunds its tokens automatically.

Drop a picture. A photo, render or sketch, JPG, PNG or WebP up to 20 MB. Add up to three reference views of the same object; a preflight step removes the background for you.
Pick an engine and a quality. Fast (about 25 seconds, 2 tokens) for drafts and volume; Studio (about 2 minutes, 4 tokens at Standard, 6 at High, 8 at Ultra) for production assets with 2048-pixel textures. A rig-ready toggle pre-processes characters into a T-pose.
Get a textured model. The GLB lands in your library with PBR maps (base colour, normal, metallic-roughness, ambient occlusion, emissive) as a zip. OBJ, FBX, STL and USDZ follow from the same model.
Take it further. Rig, animate, retexture, remesh, render to sprites, place it in a world or send it to print, all from the model page.

The Image to 3D studio: engine and quality choice on the left, the live token cost, and the drop zone — Image to 3D inside the studio: Fast or Studio, Standard to Ultra, T-pose on request, and the exact cost of this run before you click.

Text to 3D runs the same way without a source image. Describe one object as if to a sculptor, up to 500 characters, choose Realistic, Stylized, Toon, Anime or PBR Metal, and generate one, two or four variants. Before spending tokens on geometry you can ask for four quick concept pictures of the prompt and pick the one that becomes 3D.

The Text to 3D studio with example prompts, engine, quality and style choices, and the option to see four concepts first — Text to 3D: see it before you build it. Four concept pictures, pick one, and that is what becomes the mesh.

Asset kits

A kit is a whole themed pack from one brief. Type a theme ("medieval props", "dark gothic village with characters and weapons"), optionally add a reference image for the style, and choose 6, 12, 24, 50 or up to 100 models. A planner decides the mix across buildings, characters, props, furniture, weapons, nature, interiors and vehicles, then every model is generated as a full asset you can view, download, rig and animate. Standard detail costs 4 tokens a model, Ultra 7; characters come T-posed and rigged if you ask for it; a 12-model kit takes roughly 15 minutes and keeps building if you leave the page.

The asset kit builder: theme prompt, number of models, detail level, character pose, and the planned category mix — The kit builder. The planner shows the shape of the pack before you generate: here 12 models across six categories for 48 tokens.

A finished kit downloads as one pack in GLB, OBJ or FBX, with an "optimize for engines" pass that turns the hi-poly meshes into light, game-ready ones. It can be published to the public gallery (people can look, only you can download, unless you allow it), and it can be opened as a world: the models take their place on a street, a path and around the edge, with interiors, furniture and weapons waiting in the palette.

The Roman Senate kit page: publish settings, download pack formats, optimize for engines, and open as world — The "Roman Senate" kit, 20 models: live in the gallery, downloadable as GLB, OBJ or FBX, openable as a world. These are the figures that stand in the ChronoAtlas Senate.

Models inside the Roman Senate kit: a senate chamber diorama and three Roman characters — Inside the kit: a senate chamber diorama, a senator, two citizens, then furniture, props and weapons.

Worlds from a photo

Give the studio one wide shot of a place, a landscape, a street, a hall, and it builds the place. In buildable mode every object in the photo becomes a real model, built from its own cut-out at its true size and placed where it stood, on land, on water or floating, so you can walk it, rearrange it and export it as geometry. Photo-backdrop mode lifts the photo into a 360-degree view with depth instead: a set to look around in rather than a level. A few words about the place keep the imagined part behind the camera true to the picture.

The World from image page: buildable world or photo backdrop, number of objects, the place description and what you get — World from image: 7 tokens an object, ten objects for 70 tokens, fifteen to twenty minutes. The composer opens straight away and fills in as the work lands.

The world editor is where kits, photos and single models meet. Fly with the mouse and WASD, orbit and arrange pieces, then press F to stand in the world and walk it. The environment panel sets the sky (presets such as neon night or a clear day, or your own sky from a short prompt), the ground, terrain with relief and water, and the surface. Your library sits on the right: click or drag any model into the scene. A world exports as one GLB, a manifest, or an engine package.

The world editor with a floating neon-lit rock world, the controls card, the environment panel and the model palette — The "Shadow Map" world in the editor: 42 placed pieces, a neon sky preset, fly, arrange and walk controls, and the library as a palette.

Every model is a workspace

A model page is not a download link. The viewer shows topology, face and vertex counts and switches between material views; underneath sit Retexture, Animate and Export, and on the side 3D print, 2D sprites and Share & publish, the first two free. The page also says what it did not do: a model that is not humanoid gets "rigging skipped" instead of a broken skeleton.

A model page with an armoured dark knight in the viewer, mesh statistics, material modes, and the retexture, rig, animate and export actions — A Studio Ultra model from one picture: 476,984 faces, with retexture, rig and animate, export, and free 3D-print and sprite tools around it.

Auto-rig: 4 tokens, no weight painting or bone placement. Humanoids get a standard skeleton that Unreal, Blender and Godot recognise; animals and creatures get their own skeletons through a separate path; uploaded meshes work too.
Motion library: 135 categorised, searchable animations with baked previews, 17 free, 3 tokens per animation applied. GLB export carries mesh, skeleton, weights and motion.
Retexture: re-skin a finished model with five style presets, 4 tokens. Quad remesh: 3 tokens. Multi-view: up to three reference images of one object.
2D sprites and 3D print: free. Sprite sheets for 2D engines, and print files from the same mesh.

The rig and animate page showing the three-step flow from mesh to animated character — Rig and animate: from a static mesh to a skeleton with motion in three steps.

Photo prints and the print shop

Two tools serve people with a printer rather than a game engine. Photo prints turns a photo into a lithophane, a thin plate that shows the image when light shines through it, or into a keychain, fridge magnet or relief tile. It is built in the browser, the STL is free, and width, thickness and frame are set in millimetres with the plate previewed lit from behind, the way it looks on a window sill.

The photo to lithophane tool with make options, photo upload, width and thickness sliders and a frame choice — Photo prints: lithophane, keychain, fridge magnet or relief tile, free, with print advice built in.

The print shop is for volume: up to 20 customer photos at once, each turned into a print-ready figure on a round or square base with its own name, closed and sized in millimetres, as an STL or a painted 3MF, and the whole batch downloads as one zip. Studio costs 4 tokens a photo for the best likeness, Fast 2; making the print files is free.

The print shop: batch name, engine, figure height, base shape, colours, a preview of a figure on a named base, and the photo drop zone — The print shop: twenty photos in, twenty named figures out, as one zip.

Pricing

Everything is priced in tokens. A free account starts with 8 tokens. Plans renew monthly, unused tokens roll over for up to two months, and tokens from one-time packs never expire. Every plan includes both engines, every export format, the REST API and the MCP server.

Plan	Price	Tokens a month
Pulse	€15 a month	100
Forge	€35 a month	260
Crown	€99 a month	740
Packs	€2 to €100, one time	8 to 560 tokens

Action	Tokens
Image to 3D, Fast	2
Image or text to 3D, Studio	4, 6 or 8 by quality
Kit model	4, or 7 at Ultra
World object	7
Auto-rig, retexture	4
Animation, quad remesh, sky	3
Upload, sprites, 3D print files, lithophane	Free

The pricing page with three monthly plans and one-time token packs — Plans and packs, with the per-action token costs underneath.

Under the hood

The application and its database run in the Netherlands and files sit in Western European object storage. Generation itself runs on an external GPU provider under standard contractual clauses. Uploaded images and resulting meshes are never used to train models, there are no watermarks, and commercial use is included on every tier. The engines are credited in the open: Tripo for the Studio tier and humanoid rigging, Microsoft TRELLIS for Fast, Meshy for retexture and remesh, Mesh2Motion and Anything World for animal and creature skeletons, three.js for the viewer.

For developers there is a REST API (Bearer keys, 120 requests a minute, scoped permissions) and an MCP server at formfromlight.com/mcp with 22 tools, so Claude, Codex or any MCP client can generate models, build kits and worlds, rig, animate and retexture from a conversation. That is how the 3D wonders, armies and ships on ChronoAtlas, and the senators in its Curia, were made.

The MCP documentation page listing the 22 tools the server exposes — The MCP server: the same studio, driven from an AI assistant.